5May 11

This song got to number one for 16 weeks, so I decided to play it 16 times in a row, writing as I went.

Play 1: And we’re off. I’ve honestly hardly heard this in the last twenty years so I don’t anticipate the full horror will strike me for a few plays. In case anyone doesn’t know why I’m doing this, “Everything I Do” – a soundtrack hit from Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves – holds the record for the longest consecutive run at Number One in the UK singles chart. At least one other record has come close, a few have threatened to, but this is still the champ. Sixteen weeks. Almost four months.

The record is – oh look, you know this, but anyway – it’s a power ballad, slower in fact than I remember. Very weighty. It levels up repeatedly, reaches a climax about two-thirds of the way through, then we have a lingering solo (which I didn’t remember at all and have really no desire to hear another fifteen times), a reprise of the pre-chorus and chorus, and that’s your lot.

Play 2: So on first go that wasn’t so bad! I was 18 when this song was around and I dare say a great deal less amenable to ballads in general and romantic ballads in particular. The song got to number one just after I’d left school – I was spending the summer listening to Bob Dylan and picking fruit for a pittance. “Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands” – now there, I thought, was a love song. I suspect “Everything I Do” might have a rather wider appeal. (Ah – the solo again – now I’m noticing little moans from Bry on it, dear me.) Anyway I hardly noticed this being number one for its first few weeks and certainly bore it no ill will.

Play 3: “This is a little bit sad music” says a passing four-year old. “I don’t like sad music.” Don’t worry, only thirteen more plays to go! Anyway, in the comments Billy Hicks asks the killer question – why this? As he points out the top ten seemed to be this plus half a dozen breakbeat tracks. At the risk of a stab at topicality which will date this entry event more, there’s yer argument for AV right there. If the second preference votes for Rebel MC had been counted in favour of the Prodigy perhaps we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

More seriously I think there’s a sense in which “Everything I Do” was put at number one as a reaction to a lot of the other stuff which was going on in pop, a ballad built on good old fashioned (well, circa 1986) values. Doesn’t quite explain the longevity, though.

Play 4: That piano intro is starting to sound a bit fussy. You also have to think about the subject matter, of course. Most of the really colossal 90s hits are love songs, and very big, demonstrative, Hollywood love songs at that. And there hadn’t been many of those at Number One recently, the last comparable thing was probably “Unchained Melody”, which was from 1965 anyway. Someone in the comments called “I Wanna Sex You Up” distressingly indiscreet, which seems a bit prudish but Bryan is definitely serving up something a bit more romantic – the sexing you up is all in the thrusting, hairy-chested sound of it, not in the devotional words.

Play 5: By this point in 1991 it was simply a big summer hit – I was aware of it, and pretty sick of it, but I still doubt anyone predicted it would have the legs it did. I don’t recall it breaking sales records – the overall levels of singles sales were quite weak, so the reign of the balladosaurs was partly a function of no real competition. Broad-based hits were rarer, so when one did come along it would really clean up.

I’m feeling a bit resentful of its bludgeoning properties by now.

Play 6: The film, right, let’s talk about the film. I never saw it. I understand someone shoots an arrow into a tree at one point.

So let’s not talk about the film yet. I’m definitely noticing little touches in the production – it feels wrong to call them “subtleties” somehow – there’s a kind of quiet keyboard bit going on behind the riffola just before the solo, for instance. It all serves to make the record bigger and more treacly.

Play 7: Someone has pointed out that there’s a SIX AND A HALF MINUTE version of this, if someone throws me a YouTube I’ll treat myself to it, but no, the bulk of these plays are a radio edit.]

What’s dominating the record now for me is Adams’ voice. It’s very effortful, really bringing out his fighting for you, dying for you, etc. It’s no walk in the park, this doing everything he does for you stuff! He’d been around for a while by this time, slogging away without really making much of an impression on me. He’d done “Run To You” and that showed he had the requisite huskiness for this kind of music, but he’s a bit of a nullity otherwise. That’s probably a contributory factor to the success here, though – if you’re buying this after seeing the film, you’re probably not thinking of Bryan Adams at all, you’re thinking of Kevin Costner clad in stubble and lincoln green. I see the sleeve goes very heavy on the film title and very light on the song title, for instance.

Play 8: There’s obviously a sort of Ren Faire appeal going on here, too – there’s something a little archaic, courtly almost, in the phrasing on “search your heart, search your soul, when you find me there you’ll search no more”, and we’re in the decade of Riverdance and Braveheart and a general bodice’n’broadsword revival (which culminates in Lord Of The Rings I guess, except luckily the songs from that are all IN ELVISH, thanks Tolk!). The reading of Robin Hood implied is less freedom fighter than a kind of Chivalry rockist, the man who understands duty, honour, love etc but is forced undercover by the decadent tenor of the times.

Play 9: OK, it’s time for the six minute version. on YouTube complete with Windows Movie Maker style floaty lyrics. The piano seems mixed up a bit higher, the guitars are a little more turbo-charged but it looks like the extra minutes are all at the end, which rather wrecks the song’s dying fall, replacing it with a bit of piano and guitar vamping and Bryan doing some kind of – improvised moaning? It’s a bit like a really bad Rod Stewart track but with a lot more crashing and soloing. Sorry, Bryan, this won’t do at all – all the precisely constructed build up of romance wrecked on this longer edit in favour of a bit of post-coital mumbling and grunting. It’s like Bryan is rolling over and stealing your duvet. Or your bearskin or whatever, this is the 13th century after all.

Play 10: Back to the shorter edit, and the clanging chimes of doom start up again. Lex in the comments points out rightly that, yes, obviously the film tie-in is why this managed such a gargantuan shift at the top (by week ten it had gone past “Two Tribes”, my benchmark for massivity in hits, and everyone had noticed what was going on). One of my pet theories is how pop is basically quite a small medium, easily bullied and shifted off course by the gravitational pull of other artforms – and cinema in the 90s exerted a particular force. So in a way it’s surprising there weren’t MORE Adams-sized hits.

I’m really wincing now when the BIG CHORDS come in, it’s like the song is a mash up of a films love scene and fight scene both at once.

Play 11: OK, definitely hitting a wall here. As someone else said in the comments, who on Earth was buying this after ten weeks? I’ve now managed to get myself into the same place of sullen anger I was in back in ’91, as the nights drew in, I started a crap job in the wines section of Tescos, and this bastard thing was STILL at number one.

Play 12: I mean, sixteen weeks is a really long time. It’s like six Olympics back-to-back, or a double summer holiday back when you were a kid and summer holidays lasted forever. They’re doing the TOTP re-runs on BBC4 and people are shifting uneasily as the Brotherhood Of Man are on it week after week (with, I admit, a worse song than this), and that was number one for way less than this. Maybe I should have taken it as a sign to stop caring about pop music, but there was a lot of stuff around I really loved and believed in. On the other hand, by week twelve you didn’t really hear it much in the wild, it was just out there somewhere, selling to someone. I wonder if there was ever peer pressure on people who hadn’t bought it yet?

Play 13: Time to take stock of what I think of it. The opening is the best part, I think – it’s gentle, it sounds humble (as someone pointed out, his voice does sound pretty fucked, but for me that suits the been-through-a-battle vibe). The piano chord announcing the second section sounds grossly echoey, though, and the rhythm it sets up is really donkey-ish and plodding. By this point Adam’s identical long vowels are starting to grate, too. The “no love, like your love” does the same stuff, but heavier – plate mail now, not leather armour – and it works better that way, approaching something like rock. Which is why the solo is such a drag, a real energy-killer – Bryan sounds even more knackered after it, like the drums are having to prop his wounded frame up. And then he dies, and it’s almost pretty again, or perhaps I’m just glad it’s ending.

Play 14: This time watching the video, a treat I’ve so far denied myself. The denim! Goodness me, I’d forgotten what a poster boy for denim he was. Bryan looks exhausted before it even starts, grizzled and baffled, a very un-starry sort of star. Most compelling is the bassist uncomfortably squatting up and down before the solo.

Play 15: My wife, who was 15 at the time of EID’s chart reign, went to a Bryan Adams gig in Summer ’92 – supported by Extreme. I asked her if there was any particular reaction when “Everything I Do” was played, but no – it was lighters aloft the whole time of course, but no great excitement. “He was a nice man who’d made a nice song and the whole thing was very nice” was her – not damning – verdict. “Everything I Do” is forceful, sweeping, and suchlike – and memorable too – but also rather unshowy and straightforward. A denimish sort of a song. You can imagine it not wearing out its welcome among its constituency, in the way that something more kitschy – a Jim Steinman jam, perhaps – might make fans feel uncomfortable or awkward after a while. It’s a low-calorie type of a power ballad.

Play 16: “Last play!” I announce to the family. “Good!” says my four year old. “Let’s see if the song’s getting better or worser.” I press play. “It’s getting worser.” Too right. Though actually it hit bottom a few plays ago, and now – just as then – a sort of acceptance has set in. By the sixteenth week, everyone knew it was absurd that this laboured but harmless thing had been at number one for so long, but there was amusement at that absurdity. Which isn’t to say I wasn’t grateful when the spell was finally broken – far happier with the band responsible than I’ve ever been before or since.

So sixteen plays later, what have I learned? Weirdly, I still find it quite hard to get a grip on. For all its bluster there’s an amiable space at the centre of “Everything I Do”, a knack of fading into the background which probably stood it in good stead. I boggled at it in 1991 but I don’t think I hated it, and I can’t really hate it now.

#125-6: I remember Bryan turning up in the audience at totp one time, and barging aside a presenter during a link, all while wearing a Chelsea shirt. He was never announced and you couldn’t even see him that clearly, so it seemed a bit odd, especially as he didn’t have a record in the charts at the time iirc. Why would he go to Elstree to do that?!

#123: doubtless everyone feels the same about their own era, but I first found music press music in 1991 and it seemed anything but the doldrums to me – plenty of genuine indie classic albums that year (the ones you mention, tfc, mbv, st et), awesome shoegaze eps dropping fortnightly, tons of wonderful dance singles.

In retrospect it was always the latter that affected me most and that I’d like to hear now, so I do resent spending years in the music press ghettoes for years afterwards. The dance stuff they covered tended for obvious reasons towards po-faced albums acts rather than cartoonish singles merchants, which is a shame but I guess maybe shows that reading is not always the best reaction to great tunes.

1991 does seem like a rather unassuming period, compared to what came after and what had just been – there seems more of a spectrum of possibility for that kind of music press music, in the absence of a grand narrative. But then that’s probably only apparent if you were there to feel the stuff that’s been all forgotten now. Still, if britpop allowed for these various nooks, I don’t remember them.

As #125 points out, another thing that emphasised its marathon run was that Adams only performed it on Top of the Pops once, so for its entire run it was represented by either the same performance or the video – and when Pops was revamped in October, they couldn’t show the performance anymore either, because it was on the old set, so you just got the video over and over again instead, which made it seem number one for longer.

1991 was a very strange year musically because, as I mentioned when commenting on Chesney Hawkes, there were virtually no teen idols around – New Kids On The Block, Kylie and Jason were all going down the dumper, and at the Smash Hits Awards there were prizes for Marky Mark and Extreme. You ended up with Smash Hits promoting the likes of Jesus Jones and EMF, as well as the bog standard likes of Kenny Thomas. So there was nobody around to stop Adams, really.

Incidentally I dunno why every wedding DJ now seems to play Summer of 69, I was at a do the other week and said to the person I was sitting next to that DJs in these places always play Summer of 69, only for him to put it on thirty seconds later. I read it was on the playlist for the Royal Wedding reception! I wouldn’t mind, but it’s undanceable.

Why only now I felt the need to comment on this, I don’t know! But there you go.
With the benefit of hindsight, one can easily claim this song was the Power Ballad Era’s one last big shot at the limelight a few months before That Album With The Naked Baby Under The Pool Water changed everything.
OK, so a lot of you will claim the whole power ballad thing never really hit in the UK the way it did in America or even some other Continental Europe countries. Fair enough. In fact, I’d wager that “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” might even be the only such member of its species troubling Popular‘s narrative. Still, one cannot help to think that this is another case where a song’s mammoth success is not, in any shape or form, a new beginning, but rather the very peak of Something and that the road marked Down is the only way possible after it. Needless to say, Bryan hasn’t exactly hit such heights since then, and power ballads as unashamedly big as this started becoming a scarcity, probably as a result of a Where To Go Next after such giddy heights.

I hated this song so much. Partly for its blandness, partly for its success and longevity but mainly for what I saw as some kind of self-perpetuating endorsement. People thought it must be good because it remained at number one so long. It wasn’t. At the time I disliked my job and I worked with a girl who (along with her boyfriend) bought all the number one singles, whether they liked them or not. I was especially opposed to this populist approach. Why buy stuff you don’t like? At least this being No. 1 for so long saved them some money.

One of the three 90’s megahits that was huge almost everywhere in the Western world (since they’re no longer bunnied I can say the others were CITW97 and MHWGO). In the US, EID was #1 for seven weeks, a quite impressive accomplishment at the time that’s been obscured by the change in Hot 100 methodology a few months later that caused lengthy stays at #1 to become commonplace, a situation that persists to this day.

During the mid-to-late 80’s and into 1990-91, the top of the Hot 100 was pretty much a revolving door, not quite as much as the UK chart today, but 1 or 2 weeks per #1 was the norm. 3 weeks at #1 was an accomplishment, 4 weeks meant you had one of the biggest hits of the year. At the beginning of 1991, the 4-week barrier had not been broken since “Like A Virgin” six years prior (seemingly forever for a teenager like myself). I sometimes referred to this as the “We Are The World” curse: since the famous charity record had been deposed after just 4 weeks, the chart gods/Billboard/whoever had apparently decreed that no record shall ever surpass that mark again. Or something like that. Anyway, in the late spring of 1991, a record came along that had all the makings of a possible end to the curse. No, not EID, I refer to the much-hyped first ballad by dance diva Paula Abdul: “Rush Rush”. And in a tidal wave of airplay, sales, and great publicity, it quickly raced to the top of the chart and racked up one week after another until the magic 5th week came and the curse was broken. Avid chartaholic that I was, I still remember exactly where I was when I found out. Ironically, “Rush Rush” is almost completely forgotten today. I haven’t heard it on the radio in years, and references to the recording career of the future American Idol judge focus entirely on her Forever Your Girl-era dance hits. Just as well, as RR wouldn’t be 1991’s top hit after all….

I first saw Robin Hood in the theater in June that summer while vacationing with my family at the New Jersey shore (not at all like that horrible MTV show which hopefully hasn’t crossed the ocean, btw). I actually enjoyed the film despite the cheesy dialogue and Kevin Costner’s infamously bad attempt at a British accent. As the credits rolled I got my first exposure to EID. My sister mentioned it was the new Bryan Adams song. I didn’t give it much thought at the time as everyone knew BA was a has-been. In fact, often “Heaven” was referred to as his only number one hit with the clear implication that he wouldn’t come close to another one.

Of course, EID would soon debut on the Hot 100 and race to the top in a then-astonishing five weeks – just two weeks after “Rush Rush” in fact (EMF’s “Unbelievable” was the interregnum). And it quickly became apparent an even more impressive run at #1 was about to happen: 5, then 6, then 7 weeks: longest run since the legendary (to me) 8 weeks of “Every Breath You Take” in 1983. The fact that it kept a record-tying five songs at #2 underlined how impressive this was in an otherwise revolving door chart climate. Soon after it was deposed at US#1 (by Paula coincidentally) came word of its record-breaking performance in the UK – the UK chart doesn’t make the news here that often, but this time it did. On the American Top 40 year-end countdown, where EID was #1 of course, Shadoe Stevens made note of both the US and UK chart runs when announcing the song. I think I still have this on tape somewhere.

As it turned out, changes were afoot in the Hot 100. A new chart methodology called Soundscan was about to be introduced that would count individual single sales and plays as they happened making everything much more accurate. No longer would the chart rely on easily manipulated playlists and shop-compiled sales reports. Aside from dramatically exposing the deficiencies of the previous charts, the new Hot 100 would also end the revolving door chart. Top 40 and top 10 hits would be much harder to earn, and long stays at #1 would become the new normal. A test chart had been compiled using the new methodology for a good six months or so before it became official in December 1991. Supposedly EID spent 17 weeks at #1 on this test chart which would still be a record today. Instead it would fall to Boyz II Men, then Whitney, then B2M again teaming with Mariah to set the new benchmarks for length of stay atop the Hot 100. One record EID still holds though: most competitors held at #2 (tied with “Theme From A Summer Place” from 1960.

So what was its appeal then? Like I said, it didn’t register with me much when I first heard it at the end of Robin Hood. RH was a popular movie, but it wasn’t even the most popular of 1991, let alone an all-time great. As mentioned many times on this thread, it did have weak competition (at least by sales, not necessarily quality), so that helped. It did get a lot of request airplay on love song shows in 91, but it seems to have receded to the background in the years since – I don’t think it would make many lists of All-Time Great Love Songs today. Then again, I’ve heard it at many weddings, occasionally as first dance song, so maybe I’m wrong. As I said at the very top of the post, it crossed many cultural barriers too: not just a UK phenomenon like the 15-week #1 from 1994 that missed the US top 40, or the various Boyz II Men and Mariah Carey songs that were much more popular in the US than elsewhere. And finally, I must admit I kind of like it too: not love it – there’s very few love songs I truly love. But I guess it just became one of those familiar yet comfortable sounds during its moment of glory. So, what the heck, 6/10.

1,001 Songs You Must Hear Before You Die, and 10,001 You Must Download (2010) 1002
Bob Merserau (Canada) – The Top 100 Canadian Singles of All Time (2010) 63
Bruce Pollock (USA) – The 7,500 Most Important Songs of 1944-2000 (2005)
Giannis Petridis (Greece) – 2004 of the Best Songs of the Century (2003)
Grammy Awards (USA) – Record of the Year Nominee

I was just wondering where if anywhere that ought to go. Thanks Kinitawowi

I was lucky enough to know Alan before he was famous as his long-term partner Rima, whom he married finally in 2003, was a good friend in my Notting Hill days and we often found ourselves at the same parties. A lovely man with no front whatsoever.

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I'm writing about every UK number one single, in order. It's taken a while, it'll take a while longer. Wander around in the archives, or join in with the marvellous bunch of commenters we've managed to attract - new voices always very welcome!

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Tom invented Freaky Trigger on a bus journey in the mid-90s. A page about what he's up to can be found here.

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